Wednesday: Wednesday night marked the beginning of all the festivities. There was a big concert in Placa Catalunya, the main square of Barcelona. I'm sure it was a very popular Spanish band that played...I had no idea who they were. After a few songs at the concert, we wandered down Las Ramblas, a very popular street, and ran into a parade of Giants! It's kind of hard to explain. There were marching bands playing, people throwing confetti, and then huge...giants? See the picture, that will explain it much better. Anyways, after the parade and some sangria, we made our way to another Placa in Barcelona to see an awesome Flamenco guitar show. There were old men playing guitar and singing and it was incredible.
Thursday: No school! One of the main events of Merce is the Castellers...or, the Human Towers. I think the pictures will explain it better than I can. Just to sum it up: really crowded, people climbing on top of each other, towers 6 stories worth of people high. Awesome. After that, we headed to an "Asia" festival to get some Asian cuisine. Well, the boys I was with were very upset to find a) there was no food, and b) it was the "wrong Asia anyways." They were looking for China and Japan, but instead found all the the "-Stan" countries. Randomly enough, in the middle of Asia, we found a ragtime band playing (called the New Orleans Raggamuffins) and that was great. We left Asia and found some cheap Greek food and I had a falafel. Mmmm. That night, we headed to Mont Juic to see a beautiful fountain show. See the pictures. They synced up the lights and water with music. After the fountain, we made our way to a carnival on the beach and then to a bar with a live blues jam.
Friday: No school! I had a little "me" time and explored the area near Barceloneta (the beach) on my own. I read my book and wandered and got sunburned. Later that night, we were walking down Las Ramblas and ran into a parade with drum-lines and dragons! What a great combination. I tried to post a video, who knows if it will work. Anyways, we then saw another popular Spanish band perform, and then made our way to Placa Real to see the band The Go! Team play. They're a fun band from England who put on a great show. Very animated.
Saturday: On Saturday, I returned to Mont Juic to go to the Joan Mirò Foundation. Miro was a famous Surrealist (as well as a few other genres) painter and sculptor. His work is definitely "out there," but gorgeous and interesting. It made me think. After exploring a garden in Mont Juic and eating a bocadillo, I headed back home. That night, we saw some fireworks on the beach and they were great. What an awesome venue to see fireworks...definitely beats Indian Hill High School. After the fireworks, we headed again to Placa Real to see a band called Akron/Family. They put on a very ...interesting... live show. Lots of feedback and lots of noise, random instruments, fog machines..the works. It was a great time, earaches aside.
Today is the last day of Merce..que triste. I spent most of the afternoon doing homework and helping Maria with another technology crisis. Her son, Khaled, came over and was using my computer to pay for a soccer game on Maria's cable box. All of a sudden, something happened to the power, and none of the outlets the entire living room work! This started quite the struggle of us finding the fuse box, resetting things, testing all the outlets in the house, finding extension cords, creating the largest array of extension cord connections I have ever seen and plugging in the TV using an outlet from across the house. Best part was, when we reset the power to the apartment, it disconnected the internet! We all remember the intense internet struggles we had the first days here in Barcelona, right? Luckily Khaled and I found this whole ordeal pretty funny, while Maria was running around the house having no idea what was going on, saying things like "Que horror!" and "Siempre problemas!" After a few minutes of trying, we reconfigured the internet so it worked, and he was able to buy the soccer game, and the world was saved.
Tonight, I am going to the closing ceremonies of Merce at Mont Juic. They are combining fireworks, laser lights, and the fountain show into one display! I am very excited.
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